Proposal including community input on city spending doesn’t pass
JACKSON, Tenn. — At Jackson City Council‘s special called meeting on Tuesday, the council passed on second reading a proposed budget amendment to acquire nearly $5 million worth of additional industrial land to bring Georgia Pacific to Jackson.
“The city will net $250,000 on the land sale and we get 100 acres, we’ll have 100 acres already free and clear,” said Councilman Paul Taylor. “So we won’t owe anything on that. We’ll have that available if there’s another industrial client that comes along that needs that property that’s ready and available.”
After last week’s special meeting, the final guidance for the American Rescue Plan came out.
Councilman Taylor presented a resolution to provide more accountability to how these dollars will be spent. However, the resolution was not passed.
“I didn’t feel like they [the council] were willing to take on that responsibility,” Taylor said. “And so what this proposal did was assign that accountability piece to qualify these projects to the Mayor. It also established reporting guidelines where the Mayor would report to us quarterly on these projects and how these dollars are being spent so we can track that, but then outside of that was the spending buckets.”
In Taylor’s resolution, his main two priorities were pushing for timeliness and community input.
The resolution proposed that out of the $13.9 million in COVID relief funds, to use up to $10 million for capital this and next year. Also, nearly $1 million to fund stormwater matching grants that the State of Tennessee is going to offer. And the $2.9 million left would be for the community to choose what they want.
“My proposal was to allow the community to have input on that,” Taylor said. “That’s one of the themes of the American Rescue Plan, is community involvement. Currently, we don’t have any mechanism to facilitate that. And so I was pushing for the community to be involved, for them to be able to tell us what issues they have.”
In terms of the stormwater or infrastructure matching grant, Taylor says it is moving at a fast pace. He says they need to be ready to submit qualified projects to the state to access the funds. If they miss the window on the funds the state has held, they will have to compete with other communities for the money.
“Ultimately my goal was to maximize the use of these dollars to get the most out of it. I think that should be all of our goals. But, you know, the things are gonna have to really fall in line, the ducks are gonna have to be put in a row for us to be able to do this. And so if we’re waiting until February to come up with another resolution to this, you know, time ticks.”
Of the council members present at Tuesday’s meeting, Tara Skinner, Gary Pickens, Ross Priddy and Paul Taylor voted “yes” for the resolution. Marda Wallace, David Cisco, and Russ McKelvey voted “no,” and Johnny Dodd abstained.
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